I heard from Dr. Kemmerer that she finds ketamine safe for short procedures.
She suspects that part of the high number so deaths which used to be seen in
ferrets in which ketamine was used for such surgeries might have simply been
inexperience with ferrets.  Do NOT know if it's safe for long procedures.
 
HOW CAN WE GET MORE ADRENAL STUDIES DONE?  One way is to have the money put
aside to do them.  That sort of lure is going to make researchers more
likely to design good studies which meet the pre-study review of the Morris
Animal Foundation study-review panel.  If you get together enough (Can't
recall offhand if it's $25 or $50 dollars to specifically designate what the
moneys should go toward (but fifty is less than $1/day, and for those who
are putting themselves through school it can be collected from multiple
people by a local club.).  The Morris Animal Foundation is a reputable
charity which is tax deductible and which you'll find that researchers know
about.  It is one of the places we have to thank for the work which go the
1998 Compendium changes that are saving so many ferrets.  The address is:
Morris Animal Foundation, 45 Inverness Drive East, Englewood, CO 80112-5480,
1-303-790-2345, for credit card donations you can call 1-800-243-2345
weekdays.  Yes, this IS the same Morris Animal Foundation which Betty White
has mentioned in interviews sometimes.
 
Bob's adrenal results also mesh with our anecdotal evidence and what we have
read over the years about other ferrets.  Basically, a small percentage of
ferrets get adrenal diseases, they sometimes seem to clump, affected ones
come from all types of breeders, surgery seems to work the best.  Steve and
I have noticed from others' earlier surveys, as Bob did from his as well,
that shelter ferrets seem to have higher rates, but that's certainly not a
good reason to not get shelter ferrets since most adrenal diseases happen
late in life when things just plain do start going wrong (just as in humans)
and most are treatable to at least some extent.  This is a very complex
problem and it deserves the funding of folks in the ferret community for
studies which might point toward solutions.  Better to study it now and
learn what we can, than to wait until we have ferrets ill and then want a
miracle, right?  YOU can send money to the Morris Animal Foundation
earmarked for ferret adrenal health studies as per the above paragraph.  How
do I know?  We've done that sort of thing, ourselves.
 
Okay, I have NOT confirmed the following things i was told about Triple F,
so use a grain of salt, but with all the recent FML mention of marketing of
Triple F ferrets and the people torn up by them, I figured you folks had
better have this to take into consideration.  The distributor in Athens, PA
(I forget if the name is "Country" or "Countryside", but it's something in
the range), and Triple F are supposed to be different sections of the same
company according to a breeder we know.  Also, they were originally supposed
to be research and fur suppliers.  The kits are supposed to be lovely, but
these are NOT animals which were bred for pet stock so the temperments are a
serious problem.  Again, take this with a grain of salt, since I haven't
confirmed it, though it meshes with the temperment reports here.  We have a
risk in this situation of one place undermining many of the efforts to get
folks (including people who make important decisions which impact on the
safety of ALL our ferrets) to realize how wonderful pet stock ferrets are,
so keep in mind the assorted first-hand reports here and do with them as you
see fit.  The location is about midway across the horizontal slab of PA's
northern border and only a few miles down from it.  Does someone in that
area want to visit there and report on conditions?
[Posted in FML issue 2240]